A tipping point is reached when a combination of events, perhaps unrelated and ostensibly irrelevant, creates a wave of activity. See Malcolm Gladwell, author of The Tipping Point, which was published in 2000 and just recently became a best-seller. The Tipping Point reached a tipping point.

Bruce Marcus believes changes in the law and accounting professions will bring about a tipping point and firms will be very different from what they have been during the last 100 years. Changes originated as a result of many events:

• The landmark 1977 U.S. Supreme Court decision, Bates v. State Bar of Arizona (Editor’s note: In the Bates decision, ethics rules barring solicitation of clients were held to violate anti-trust laws.)
• Progress in technologies that have been adopted quickly by professional firms.
• The emergence of knowledge management.
• Gradual acceptance of new philosophies about serving clients.
• Consolidation in the accounting profession.
• Emergence of the importance of internal communications.

Marcus’s prescription for dealing with these phenomena includes:

• Listen to clients and become more knowledgeable about their companies and the industries in which they operate. Don’t offer advice until you truly understand their problems.
• Be aware of innovative practices at other firms in value billing, partnership structures, knowledge management, and communications.
• Analyze your tried and true practices and procedures to see if they can be changed for the better.
• Evaluate talent without regard to who possesses it. Talent is too dear to let your perceptions be influenced by race, age, gender, or anything else.
• You are a professional, but you are also a business person. Business needs leadership to succeed in a changing climate.

From The Marcus Perspective, July 10, 2006. Read the complete article at, http://themarcusperspective.typepad.com/themarcus perspective/2006/07/are_we_near_the.html.